Spend Presidents Day Weekend (February 16-17, 2013) with authors, activists, politicians, academics, theater and visual artists, filmmakers and members of the community to examine the complex mix of issues and attitudes, history and ideology, personal relations and political calculations that create our contemporary understanding of Race in America.

The anchor for the weekend is the Theater J production of David Mamet’s Race. In addition to our Opening Plenary and various panel discussions, each performance of Race will have a provocative talkback immediately following the show. All ticket holders are welcome to participate in the talkback or tickets to the talkback can be purchased separately.

Prologue:Jackie Robinson Steals Home & Other Meditations on the Presidency

presented by E. Ethelbert Miller, poet and director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University

A multi-media think-piece on the backlash against the Obama Presidency, using as its model the audacity of the first African American in Major League Baseball’s unforgettable act of stealing home in the 1955 World Series against the NY Yankees and the outrage and inspiration it provoked.

Opening PlenaryA Second Term for the First Black President: Considering the Impact of Race at the Midpoint of the Obama Era

The re-election of President Obama has not inaugurated a post-racial era so much as highlighted a nation still deeply divided on attitudes towards race. What will such divisiveness bring, as America continues to become more diverse? How will the experiences of the first term inform what is coming in the second?

Civil Rights attorneys reflect on the social advancements achieved through the courts during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement and the work still to be done, in a contemporary landscape.

Moderator: Nan Aron, Founder and President of The Alliance for Justice

Featured Panelist: • Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Delegate for the District of Columbia• Jim Murphy, Civil Rights attorney• Lynn French, an attorney who teaches the History of the Civil Rights Movement at University of Virginia, she is Executive Director of Hope and a Home• William L. Robinson, the Olie W. Rauh Professor of Law, founding Dean of the District of Columbia School of Law• John C. Brittain professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law.

Sunday, February 17

11:00 am Jazz BrunchEnjoy the works of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman in a live performance by the DUBTrio with a selection of bagels, schmears and other brunch favorites prior to the screening of White: A Memoir in Color

"Adoption almost immediately brings up issues around race. There is nothing quite like having to identify what race child you are comfortable raising to make you look more deeply into your own identity.” So says filmmaker Joel Katz, the son of white, Jewish, immigrant parents and whose father was a professor at Howard University during the turbulent civil rights and black power period, an experience that challenged the elder Katz’s attitudes towards US race relations. The filmmaker confronts his own racial attitudes as he and his wife become adoptive parents to a mixed-race child.

Featured Panelists: • Joel Katz, documentary filmmaker• Peter Edelman, professor Georgetown University Law Center and former member of the Clinton Administration• Janice Goldwater, Executive Director of Adoptions Together

The National Mall will add another museum in 2015. What does the addition of The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture say about how we recognize and tell the stories of different racial and ethnic groups in America?

• Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Deputy Director of the National Museum of African American History & Culture • Kevin Gover, Director, Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian • Gonzalo Casals, Deputy Executive Director of El Museo del Barrio

David Mamet's play presciently foreshadowed the infamous Dominique Strauss Kahn affair of 2011. Our discussion recounts the incendiary controversy ignited by that public scandal, and so many others, where race, attraction, and sexual aggression meet.

This discussion begins a multi-week debate about the enduring relevance of the works and words of David Mamet. A closing evening of scenes, speeches, and closing arguments will take place Monday, March 4 at Round House Theatre.